In 2016, Stanton Williams and Asif Khan, working together with conservation architect Julian Harrap and landscape design consultants J&L Gibbons, were the winners of an international competition to find an architect to design the new Museum of London. The team was selected for their “innovative thinking, sensitivity to the heritage of the existing market buildings and understanding of practicalities of creating a great museum experience”.

The vision for the new Museum of London balances a crisp and contemporary design with a strong recognition of the physicality and power of the existing spaces of the West Smithfield site. The early stage concept includes a new lifted landmark dome which would create a beautiful light-filled entrance to the museum; innovative spiral escalators will transport visitors down to the exhibition galleries in a vast excavated underground chamber; flexible spaces are included that can serve as a new meeting place for London; and a centre for events and debate and a new sunken garden and green spaces to provide pockets of tranquillity.

Stanton Williams and Asif Khan are now working closely with the team at the Museum of London and the museum’s stakeholders including the GLA, City of London Corporation and the local Smithfield community to develop their initial concepts into a fully-formed vision for the new museum at West Smithfield.

Paul Williams, Director of Stanton Williams, said: “We are immensely excited about being given the opportunity to work with the Museum of London on this wonderfully challenging project – participating in an endeavour that will transform an area of London that has such a rich history, but sadly has been in decline for many years. Encountering the historic market spaces for the first time in early April this year, we were ‘blown away’ by the power and physicality already existing, and knew then, that whatever scheme we developed, this physicality needed to be harnessed, and not lost, and that initial observation has inspired our initial design proposals. This project will engage a broad community well beyond London.”

Asif Khan said: “To have a chance to create a new museum for London, in London, about London, at this moment in time is incredibly exciting for us. We all know the power of public spaces in changing our city and our individual lives, and this is what drives us. We want the Museum of London to be a museum where everyone belongs, and where the future of London is created.”